Unless you have that magic wand, habits require an active, persistent, and conscious change in behaviors. It also requires a desire for and a belief that you can make that change.
So, three questions:
- Do you want it?
- Do you believe it’s possible to change your go-to choices?
- Will you stay with the changes until they feel more natural?
Granted, initially, they won’t feel natural. You’ve been doing it your way for a long time – that’s how you learned or fell into doing it, and it worked well enough for a while. Emotional eating served a purpose. It DID help you, but now it’s creating new issues. As an emotional eating coach, I help others find and unpack what drives the behavior so you can then decide if you still want to respond in that way or to choose a response that more effectively serves your goals.
Think about this: We make changes in other areas and find ways to make it work, don’t we?
That hairstyle looks great in the salon, but it will take an adjustment to your current styling behavior if you want the same result at home.
When you moved from one house to another, you had to find a new route home and choose to go to that new home every day. That’s where you live now – no matter what you loved about the old place or how it nurtured and supported you in the past.
When my work took me to Wales for a few years and then back to Texas, neither set of friends and co-workers would have been happy if I continued to use slang terms that were acceptable in one culture and considered swearing or vulgar in the other. It’s the same word. Both in English. VERY. DIFFERENT. MEANINGS. Using the old words definitely would NOT serve me.
Yet with food, we struggle to adapt our mechanical behaviors to create new habits. Part of that may go back to question one: Do you want it? We always say we do, but then we fall to temptation because we’re in a familiar environment where we used to eat, we’re with friends who offer too much temptation, we’re home alone and bored, we’re ___________________. Here’s the harder question: Do you want your goal enough to choose your new plan, learn to style it for your needs, find your way home to it every night, and use the words you say to yourself in a way that serves you?
Yes, it is a simple process of persistent effort to change my behaviors, but _________________. How would you fill in that blank?
Renée Jones is a counselor and coach specializing in overcoming emotional eating. After 40 years on the Diet Yo-Yo, she struggled to find what worked for her while emotional eating sabotaged every attempt. When she finally overcame that emotional eating to lose her weight, maintenance on a low-fat diet left her tired, hungry, and cranky. In April of 2015, she found the ketogenic lifestyle and later Carrie Brown’s recipes, which freed her from the Diet Yo-Yo and dark mood swings.
Now she helps others get free of their emotional eating and other baggage so their hearts can heal along with their bodies. She has a Master’s degree in Counseling with certifications in both traditional and contemporary models as well as Horse-Assisted and relaxation methods. She has an international counseling and coaching practice.
Author of What’s Really Eating You: Overcome the Triggers of Comfort Eating
Connect with Renée!
www.packyourownbag.com
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